Takefumi MITANI

Abstract Energetic electron precipitation plays a pivotal role in shaping Earth's radiation belt dynamics and drives significant physical and chemical changes in the upper atmosphere. However, the detailed mechanisms governing the loss of relativistic electrons have remained unclear, largely due to the limited energy coverage and coarse resolution of previous measurements. Here we report high‐resolution observations of bursty electron precipitation across a broad energy range (0.3–2.3 MeV), obtained by the Relativistic Electron and Proton Telescope integrated little experiment‐2 (REPTile‐2) onboard the Colorado Inner Radiation Belt Experiment (CIRBE) CubeSat. REPTile‐2 employs a novel instrument design that minimizes background to enable clean spectral measurements with the highest energy resolution achieved to date in low‐Earth orbit for this energy range. During the conjunction events when CIRBE was close to the same field line with Arase satellite at higher altitudes, our analysis shows that pitch angle diffusion driven by chorus waves can fully account for the observed three bursty precipitation events over the entire energy range. These results provide the definitive evidence for a unified chorus‐driven electron loss process acting across a wide energy range and underscore the critical importance of high‐resolution measurements in resolving long‐standing uncertainties in radiation belt dynamics. Furthermore, they offer new insight into the energy‐dependent atmospheric impacts of electron precipitation, with broad implications for space weather forecasting and upper atmospheric chemistry.

Abstract On 15 February 2018 a co‐rotating interaction region (CIR) from an equatorial coronal hole reached the Earth. The CIR initiated a moderate and slowly intensifying geomagnetic storm, which began with a large and strong substorm injection. The substorm injection was exceptionally well‐observed by an array of spacecraft including LANL‐GEO satellites, Van Allen Probes (RBSP), Arase (ERG), and MetOp/POES, as well as ground‐based instruments. These observations enable the unambiguous identification of several important features that have been impossible to measure directly in other events. The substorm injection extended well inside the geosynchronous orbit. A fortuitous conjunction of RBSP‐A (moving inbound) and Arase (simultaneously moving outbound at the same magnetic local time) allows us to establish, very precisely, the location of the inner edge of the injection region at L  = 3.8−3.9. In supporting observations, North American riometers saw precipitation extending down to L  ≈ 4 but not lower. Arase and RBSP‐A also observed whistler‐mode hiss waves inside the plasmasphere. Analysis of the resonance conditions shows, conclusively, and for the first time, that they were produced by the drifting injected electrons. RBSP‐A observations also show the injection (or transport) of electrons into or through the slot region within hours of the substorm injection onset. Previous studies were not able to clearly connect or separate substorm injections and slot‐filling processes. These new observations clearly identify slot‐filling as a spatially and temporally separate process that is not a direct result of substorm injection.

Abstract. In the polar middle and upper atmosphere, nitric oxide (NO) is produced in large amounts by both solar EUV and X-ray radiation and energetic particle precipitation, and its chemical loss is driven by photodissociation. As a result, polar atmospheric NO has a clear seasonal variability and a solar cycle dependency which have been measured by satellite-based instruments. On shorter timescales, NO response to magnetospheric electron precipitation has been shown to take place on a day-to-day basis. Despite recent studies using observations and simulations, it remains challenging to understand NO daily distribution in the mesosphere–lower thermosphere during geomagnetic storms and to separate contributions of electron forcing and atmospheric chemistry and dynamics. This is due to the uncertainties existing in the available electron flux observations, differences in representation of NO chemistry in models, and differences between NO observations from satellite instruments. In this paper, we use mesospheric–lower-thermospheric NO column density data measured with a millimeter-wave spectroscopic radiometer at the Syowa station in Antarctica. In the period 2012–2017, we study both the long-term and short-term variability of NO. Comparisons are made with results from the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model to understand the shortcomings of current electron forcing in models and how the representation of the NO variability can be improved in simulations. We find that, qualitatively, the simulated year-to-year and day-to-day variability of NO is in agreement with the observations. On the other hand, there is up to a factor of 2 underestimation of the NO column density in wintertime. Also, the model captures only 27 % of the range of observed daily NO values. The observed day-to-day variability has a good correlation with three different geomagnetic indices, indicating the importance of electron forcing in atmospheric NO production. Using electron flux measurements from the Arase satellite, we demonstrate their potential in atmospheric research. Our results call for improved representation of electron forcing in simulations to capture the observed day-to-day variability.